Medicaid

As some local leaders warn about a looming threat to Cortez’s Southwest Memorial Hospital, the two candidates for Montezuma County commissioner have differing views on the bill causing the threat.

Health care in southwest Colorado is in danger because of the coming impacts of H.R. 1. That was the message given by State Rep. Katie Stewart, Southwest Health System CEO Joe Theine, and others during a virtual press conference Tuesday morning.

The two candidates vying for a seat on the Montezuma County Commission disagreed on issues such as child care and the controversial “Big Beautiful Bill” at a forum Wednesday evening in Dolores.

A Cortez nonprofit is reshaping disability services by centering lived experience, employment and community inclusion for people with disabilities in Southwest Colorado.

Critics of HR 1 warned in a Zoom call Thursday that its impacts to patients and hospitals in rural Colorado will be enormous.

Southwest Memorial Hospital in Cortez has been honored nationally, even as it faces financial struggles that are being shared by many hospitals across the state and nation.

Nonpartisan staffers told lawmakers this month that the way they spent billions of dollars in one-time federal funds given to Colorado during the COVID pandemic contributed to the state’s budget shortfall.

Colorado’s Attorney General — and 2026 gubernatorial candidate — talks rural health care, immigration, gun laws, political violence, water rights, and the future of public radio.

Democrats at the Capitol also pushed back the start date of Colorado’s first-in-the-nation AI law, shored up subsidies on health insurance and tweaked a pair of measures on the November ballot

Two bills passed in Colorado's special session aim to safeguard safety-net programs. One boosts state funding for SNAP food assistance, the other guarantees Medicaid coverage at Planned Parenthood clinics.